Buried deep in the pocket of my cutoff blue jeans shorts, my fist clenched a wad of cash that represented my life’s savings from countless hours of mowing lawns, shoveling snow, babysitting and finally my birthday haul, while big ass crows, not butterflies, dive-bombed in my stomach.
I stood in the far back reaches of JC Penney at Brookfield Square Mall, right in front of the glass doors that open to the sun-drenched parking lot, trying desperately not to throw up.
The type of gut-gurgling angst that typically accompanied an appointment in a dentist chair, a trip to the doctor for another vaccine shot, standing in line at the confessional, or finding a seat on the school bus every morning smothered me and turned my knees into Slinkys.
Before me in the middle of the row of brand new bicycles, a bright blue 3-speed with drop bars covered in spotless white tape and a mock sports car shifter atop the top tube seduced me into a trance.
Happy 13th birthday to me, I thought, having endured a sleepless last night as a 12-year-old praying that the same bike I checked on each of the previous four days would still be there in the morning.
It was.
The sales staff had grown weary of my constant vigil over the bike, so they pretty much ignored me until I wobbled over to the cash register on those quivering knees and said I needed assistance.
Yesterday I probably would have said help, but today, officially as a teenager, a more proper word came out. My mind pretty much went blank from there until I rolled the bike out those glass doors, hopped on, and rode home on the first bicycle that wasn’t a hand-me-down clunker.
Just like getting that real bike long after my buddies, I’m typically late to the party. In today’s case that party being the folks who scroll endlessly through Prime Video in search of a movie to while away days at home suffering through yet another bout of Covid thanks to the sniffling kids I substitute teach.
It being 2024 and all, a 2021 movie appeared buried deep, deep in my scroll and while even as a writer I seldom think much about fonts — at least not as much as Millenials — it indeed was the scribble font of The Map of Tiny Perfect Things that caught my attention.
Once I started watching, nothing could divert my focus.
And so, as we embark into the next 100 Hey, Just Rides in this season of Thanks, I offer to you my tiny perfect cycling things in no particular order, that began (the list not perfect moments), of course, with my first bike purchase.
Tiny Perfect Cycling Things
Climbing in chilly 40-degree early morning conditions tackling 1,900 feet in elevation gain over 3.7 miles from the bottom of Tram Way in Palm Springs, California, to the empty parking lot, where I turned around gasping for oxygen to look back at the tremendous view of the desert after completing my first real climb on a bike.
Rolling into the campground at Big Foot Beach State Park in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin after a 50-mile ride under a sizzling summer sun, dropping my bike and falling backward atop my aluminum framed backpack filled with 50 pounds of gear at the end of my first true bike trip.
Slowly creeping down a descent in the Pisgah National Forest outside Barnardsville, North Carolina on my mountain bike with meager supplies left as the daylight disappeared, realizing I wasn’t lost anymore as I crossed paths with what had to have been my Guardian Angel, there to let me know I’d survive.
Diving into the Pacific Ocean at the end of my bike ride from San Fransisco to Carlsbad.
Seeing the forest open up like a curtain on a stage revealing the end of a long, hard day of mountain biking on the Fisher Creek Loop outside Stanley, Idaho, where, again, I was pretty sure I was hopelessly lost.
Running just past the finishing straight in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, beneath a few large oaks that offered shade and escape from the heat of the sun, or the spotlights, feeling as though I danced on air, alone as usual, as I caught up with Linda Brenneman after she completed her victory in the 1996 US Olympic Trials earning a trip to Sydney.
Rolling to a stop on a logging road in the Coast Range of Oregon, pausing to watch a black bear waddle across the road before me.
Watching a cougar bounce effortlessly down a logging road in front of me, its tail sticking straight up and almost still while the rest of its body thrust forward in magical motion.
Laughing uncontrollably as my pedal stroke ground to a halt — unable to turn — as I tipped over and nearly tumbled backward on the steepest pitch in my attempt to see just how hard the annual Tour DuPont climb to Beech Mountain was.
Stopping along the Ruth Bascom Riverbank Path System in Springfield, Oregon to listen to the tapping bills of Great Blue Heron chicks and see their heads craning in hopes their parents would return soon with breakfast.
Seeing the faces of my daughters as they came out one Christmas morning to find two new bicycles standing in front of the tree.
Proudly rolling behind my daughters wobbling along side the Tennessee River in Knoxville, Tennessee, on our first family bike ride.
Time to ride
